REALTOR®, Property Manager

Creating Wealth through Real Estate

When the 15 percent foreign buyer property transfer tax came into effect in August 2016, there was widespread conjecture on whether it would discourage foreign home buyers.

To find out, we asked the BC Ministry of Finance for data. They provided only the number and percentage of foreign buyer transactions. Specific data on the buyer’s country of origin was not provided.

Here’s a selection from the Ministry’s data for 2017:

As a comparison, we looked to the Capital Regional District, the city of Victoria, and the city of Kelowna, where the foreign buyer tax doesn’t apply. However, the Ministry of Finance collects data for these locations, for 2017:

The data shows that there are more foreign buyers in Metro Vancouver communities, where the foreign buyers tax applies, than in areas that don’t have the tax.